President proposed to find compromise for film dubbing and subtitling before March 4

Ukraine spent recent weeks discussing openly the collisions around foreign films dubbing-sound-subtitling for distribution in the domestic cinemas. The cinema-owners announced strike on Feb. 27 much spoken about in media. Today’s meeting headed by Mr. Yushchenko, the President of Ukraine, is apparently a response to these events. 

The Official internet-office of the President of Ukraine reports:

“The main issue discussed at the meeting was the situation in the cinematography sector in connection with the implementation of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine’s decision on Ukrainian language dubbing and subtitling of films. According to the decision all foreign-made films are forbidden to be distributed and demonstrated in the territory of Ukraine until they are dubbed, or subtitled in Ukrainian.

“The decision of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine on distribution of foreign-made films cannot be discussed or appealed. We must strictly stick to it. The state must establish due conditions  for its implementation”, the President reassured.

The President marked Ukrainian films return back to the cinemas and screens, and rebirth of film industry as a branch priority and emphasized the need to ensure the rights of citizens to watch films in Ukrainian.

Mr. Yushchenko is confident that this may be urged by dubbing-sound-subtitling in Ukrainian of foreign-made movies according to the Constitutional Court’s Decision of Dec. 24, 2007.

“At the same time I believe that the decision of the Constitutional Court on distribution of foreign-made films has just bared the decade-old problem of failure to comply the domestic film laws by the most actors of the film distribution system, particularly use of Ukrainian language”, the President said.

At the end of the meeting the President proposed the Ministry for Culture and Tourism and the State cinematography service together with the major film distribution companies’ officials to make a draft before March 4 of a compromising variant ensuring both, the implementation of the Constitutional Court’s decision on dubbing and subtitling of the film, and the film watching interests of the residents of the East and South parts of Ukraine.

Ivan Vasyunyk, the first vice-premier of Ukraine; Vasyl Vovkun, the minister for culture and tourism; Ganna Chmil, the head of the State service for cinematography; Bomhdan Batrukh, the Director-General of B&H Film Distribution; Oleksandr Tkachenko, the president of Odesa film studio Close Joint-Stock Company; yuriy Bogutsky and Andriy Kyslynsky, both deputy heads of the Secretariat of the President, also took part in the meeting”.